Gold Award for Best Website – KC Pet Project Website
Silver Award for Best Media Campaign – Derrick Nnadi Super Bowl Campaign
Silver Award for Best Social Media Campaign – Derrick Nnadi Super Bowl Campaign
Silver Award for Best Short Video – Moving Day to the KC Campus for Animal Care
The Pitch Best of Kansas City
Best Place to Adopt a Pet
Best Local Charity
Capstone Real Estate Awards – Kansas City Business Journal
Community Impact Award – KC Campus for Animal Care
Kansas City Magazine Best of KC Awards
Best Animal Nonprofit (Reader’s Choice Awards)
Year in Review
Despite a year-long pandemic and stay-at-home orders earlier this year, we still took in 10,565 animals in 2020, which was nearly the exact same number of total pets that arrived at our shelter in 2019. That included 5,234 dogs, 4,848 cats, and 483 other animals.
We adopted out 7,748 pets in 2020, which was only a very slight decrease in the number adopted out in 2019. However, cat adoptions increased to an all-time high in 2020. Following re-openings, we saw record-breaking adoption numbers from Whiskers Cat Café and at our Petco store Cat Habitats in 2020 as families flocked to our adoption centers, Petco stores, and to Whiskers Cat Café to adopt cats.
Cat adoptions were up 10.5% over last year – with 4,180 cats and kittens getting adopted. This is the highest number of cat adoptions in our organization’s history!
We also saw an 30% increase in the number of cats we were able to transfer in from other overcrowded shelters across our region (with 888 cats transferred in). This wasthe largest number of cats transferred into our organization in our history, providing lifesaving space in other shelters and helping cats find homes more quickly than ever. Length of stay for both cats and dogs is the lowest number of days it has been in years.
We took in 5,234 dogs and found new homes for 3,204 dogs in 2020 (the rest were returned to their owners or transferred out to other shelters or rescue groups). This was the second highest number of dogs adopted out in our organization’s history. Families looking for dogs to adopt surpassed the number we had available in our system, and for the first time in our organization’s history, we transferred IN 154 dogs from other overcrowded shelters in 2020 to help more dogs find homes.
We sent 4,404 dogs and cats out of the shelter into foster homes in 2020 – a new record number for foster placements!
We achieved an amazing 95.7% Live Release Rate for the year (95.0% dogs, 96.4% cats). This is the highest percentage of lives saved in our organization’s history! The number of dogs and cats euthanized for illness, injury or behavior was the second lowest in our organization’s history.
Our veterinary team performed some incredible and difficult surgeries in 2020. Earlier in the year, we discontinued surgeries for several weeks (as was recommended by national veterinary associations) to save PPE for hospitals during the pandemic. Even with this shut down, we still did 5,935 surgeries (nearly the same number as in 2019).
In early 2020, KC Pet Project proudly became one of the first 18 pilot cities in the country to help create a new animal welfare organizational model called Human Animal Support Services (HASS) – implementing a new range of services for pets and people, helping keep more animals in their homes and communities, and reducing the number of pets entering the shelter system through innovative programs and resources. This is the most progressive, transformative work that has been done in the field of animal sheltering in decades.
